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ROBERT:

That's quite interesting because most guitarists I've spoken to normally say they improvise most freely when they feel most confident and they feel that have a very good relationship going with the audience.  And what you're saying is you simply start doing that when things are falling apart.

LEO:

Yeah, when they hate me.  You've got nothing to lose and usually, if a crowd has become stiff -- which I should add as a professional entertainer rarely happens with my audience -- you have to re-establish some sense of risk and the moment you take off, which is the whole thrill of improvisation, it's there.  Especially with somebody who doesn't do that much of it.

ROBERT:

Is the live performance very important to you?  Is that where you feel your music happens best?

LEO:

Absolutely.  Recording is really for me much more like embalming than it is like performance.  And I think there's a lot to it -- to that definition of recording.

ROBERT:

Perhaps we'd better not ask you what you feel about what  you're doing at the moment?

LEO:

No, this is live.  So it's performance.  It's a little threatening because of all these devices in front of us but again, as a professional entertainer, I shouldn't even admit that.

ROBERT:

Well, play us another one.

LEO:

OK.    This is a song -- [tuning] if I have -- this should be just about right if I have a moment here to tune this thing.  It's a song that was written by Duane Allman...

ROBERT:

All right.

LEO:

It's one of the great, I think, guitar tunes, called "Little Martha."  I've tried to find out who or what little Martha was, or is.  I asked Donna Allman.  And the only answer I have is "I don't know."  [Starts playing -- To engineer]:  Thank you, Tom.

[Leo plays "Little Martha"]

ROBERT:

Oh Leo, that was great.  I really love Duane Allman's guitar playing and it was marvellous to hear that one again.  It's interesting, since you as it were brought up his name, an obvious question to ask is what your feelings about the electric guitar are because I think you played one possibly for the first time on your last album, That's What.

LEO:

I did a lot of recording with it on the last record.  I've always had one around.  I love the electric guitar.  Roy Buchanan is one of my -- I had a night at the Roxy in California that was one of my unforgettable musical experiences.  I was standing on top of my table and howling and I love it.  When they're played by a tone player -- somebody like Albert Lee --- it's a wonderful experience.

ROBERT:

You play electric guitar with a pick or do you use your fingerpicking style?

LEO:

I use my fingers also.  Who is it?  I think Jerry Reed has claimed to have -- at least I was told that he claimed -- to give up picks for a plectrum.  And Paco de Lucia told me he thought that perhaps a plectrum and the two -- the second and third finger, was the best way to play a guitar.  Which is a shocking thing for a flamenco player to say.  Fingers are about all I can do really.

ROBERT:

Are you going to sing to us this evening?  You seem to have a...

LEO:

Uh, I dread that, in this kind of situation.

ROBERT:

Why is that?  We were listening to you earlier and you've got a wonderful voice.  I don't understand your reticence where that's concerned.

LEO:

Let's see.  Well, I could maybe squeeze -- well, no.  I'm staring at the clock here, knowing what our time is.  The problem with singing is I tend to need that gap between me and the audience.  Here we're -- it's just us, isn't it?  But I would do it, but I think it would -- I'm certain it would -- run over.  As a matter of fact, I'm wondering what I could...

ROBERT:

Why did you stop singing on your records in the, whenever it was, the late seventies?

LEO:

Well, I could preface my answer saying the record I just finished is entirely vocal, so those people --

ROBERT:

[Laughing] Oh well, that's a good reposit to that one...

LEO:

But I did stop for a long time.  I hedged my bets, and I gave up trying to become a tenor was what it amounted to and everything somehow worked much better then.  I  don't have a tenor voice, as much as I admire it.  I can't get there without a lot of damage -- to me and anybody listening I think.

ROBERT:

Well, play us something without vocals then.

LEO:

OK.  I think I'll return to this 12-string.  Make some terrible noise.  [Starts playing "Regards from Chuck Pink"].  This is called "Regards from Chuck Pink," who was a short-order cook at Pink's Hot Dog Stand in Los Angeles.

[Leo plays "Regards from Chuck Pink"]

ROBERT:

Leo, I don't know what to do when I go back to England.  Whether I should snatch up my guitar or just sell it.

LEO:

[laughs]  No, play it.

ROBERT:

Do you practice?  Do you have a regular regime for that?

LEO:

No, I don't.  It's one of my big failings.  I just play every day.  I pig out on the instrument and I'm trying to establish a little discipline but, after 30 years of playing it that way, it's a little bit out of reach I think.

ROBERT:

Are there other areas of your technique which you work on in performance?

LEO:

Not so much technique as just the idea of it.  How to think my way into, for example, into trouble.  And it involves harmony really, which is a weak point in any self-taught player's repertoire.  So I spend some time when I can get the gumption, harmonizing scales.   Right now I'm doing sixths, which is very refreshing to me.

ROBERT:

Are most of the people who work in your area of folk/roots guitar, are they all self-taught?

LEO:

No.  As a matter of fact, we seem to be a rarity anymore.  There are a lot of people coming out of the Berklee school [Boston] or McPhail here in town, so I'm trying to catch up in that regard.  I could play another one come to think of it, which is a very quick -- well perhaps...let's see, what can I do here?  I'm speaking to my phones and I'll be with you in ...here we go.  I'll think of a tag in a minute..

[Leo improvises for about 20 seconds].

LEO:

That's slightly improvised.

ROBERT:

Well, it sound very good all the same.  I must say I wish I could improvise like that.

LEO:

There's a library that I draw on.  As a matter of fact, this [plays a chordal sequence with a bass walk-down], I think I've done about twice already just sitting here but you can throw them in.

ROBERT:

Are there little capsules, modules, like that you can build into songs?

LEO:

Yeah, there are, and if you improvise regularly you try to get out of them.  Everybody has them.  Some people have an ability to avoid them more frequently.

ROBERT:

Well, thanks very much for joining us Leo.  It's been absolutely marvellous and as I say, I shall have a very uneasy time with my guitar when I return to England.

[The End]